Closing Skills Gaps

Top tips to improve your training needs analysis

In the last edition, we looked at the structure for a training needs analysis (TNA). Now that you understand the importance of a TNA, how to undertake one and you’re clear on how it might be useful, are there any skills gaps left to fill?

Well, here are a few top tips to help you on your way!

Tip 1. Start With the BHAG!

The starting point has got to be, from the company perspective: “What are you trying to achieve?” “What is the long-term aim?” “What is your North Star, your guiding light?” Everything should be judged against that. Jim Collins (of Good to Great fame) coined the term the BHAG: the Big Hairy Audacious Goal.

The archetype is probably Bill Gates — his was to have “a computer on every desk.” 

Others include:

• “To democratize the automobile.” (Ford, early 1900s)
• “Become the company that most changes the worldwide image of Japanese products as being of poor quality.” (Sony, early 1950s)

So, the first question is what’s your BHAG?

Tip 2. Prioritise Effectively

The BHAG is the touchstone to prioritise against.

At a lower level, this should help tease out your future skills requirements, which might relate to marketing, sales, design skills, product knowledge, engineering knowledge and the current hot topic of the moment: how AI will help or hinder your activities. The list is not only long, it is also wide and possibly very granular! It’ll depend on where you are and where you’re going.

While focusing on the BHAG as you gather data and get closer to defining where your training needs are, you may notice particular teams, groups or departments that may be in more need of training than others. There is often no single reason why these gaps appear, and circumstances are likely to be unique to you, but some triggers might include:

• Rapid growth
• Change of strategic direction
• Changing product, service or supplier lines — are you about to change your package of lift controller supplier?
• Changes in regulations or the competitive environment
• Change of standards, e.g., EN 81, ISO 22559 or ISO 9001
• This list is not exhaustive
• Lack of, or ineffective, training in the past
• Lack of employee engagement

Only you can tell why this need for training has grown, but the important thing is that you’ve defined who the strugglers and stragglers are. It’s now a case of focusing efforts on these people to ensure that those with the greatest need get the help they need to help you.

Tip 3. Review Anticipated Roles and Competencies

The archetypal analogy for a business is a well-oiled machine, but that is today a bit Victorian in nature. We’d prefer a more organic analogy. We’d like to think of a business as a living and growing organism.

So, take a bit of time, look at the different roles within your organisation, how they interact with one another and how they are likely to grow and evolve over time. With one of our clients, we have developed a number of different organigrams to cover both different scenarios and different timelines. 

All businesses are based on a set of processes that look to deliver value to a client, and many of your day-to-day processes rely on this chain of different departments, teams and people working towards the end goal — the delivery of value. If one link in the chain is weak it will have an effect on all of the others.

It is entirely possible to use our generic model (all organisations have three core processes — get work, do work, get money) of an organisation to examine all of the links in your chain. 

Alternatively, the TNA may have revealed a lack of knowledge at a specific level or department within the organisation; this might be the result of poor communication at a management level. In these instances, because of the importance of the issue, it is essential that competency is addressed as a matter of urgency. One client, an architect of about 80 people, in an attempt to avoid this problem, has (literally) half of the staff working on the annual business plan. They get fantastic “buy in,” and because of this, have been featured a couple of times in the Sunday Times “Best Places to Work” survey.

Tip 4. Identify Your Champions

The question is – where are you going to find the information that your people need to succeed? Google and YouTube are free and fantastic assets, but:

1. You have got to locate the right stuff.
2. Once you do, it might not be sufficiently specific.
3. There is often a more efficient way.

You need to identify and promote your people to “champion”: the role of subject matter experts within your company. These are the people who:

• Know their topic inside-out, but, more importantly
• They also know what it means within the context of your company.

These employees have your back, and they know where you’re headed. But, a word of warning, these champions will usually already have a busy day job: Make sure you are not overloading them, ‘cos that really won’t help!

Tip 5. Pick the Perfect Delivery Method

Training takes many different forms, from “sitting with Nellie” (being taught by an old hand), to comprehensive and expensive external training sessions sometimes being run over many weeks and months. Just a few of the options available include:

• On-the-job training
• Shadowing
• Online training
• Mentoring/coaching
• Face to face
• Classroom/workshop based

All of which can, to a large extent, be both formal or informal.

The method chosen will largely be dictated by a range of variables: the subject matter, the importance, the budget and any time constraints. But the killer question you need to ask is: Which method will deliver the best return on your investment?

As an example, classroom/workshop training may be easy to arrange. You simply call a provider and give the job to them. But, with that comes additional and sometimes expensive costs (the cost of the provider, venue, travel and lunch expenses, etc.), but also that the company is missing a key resource for a period of time. The total investment can be high.

The online training approach often has less opportunity for interaction but can be extremely quick and easy to manage, implement and track.

Of course, there is not a one-size-fits-all approach, so it’s a case of working out what best fits for you and your people.

A couple of companies we have worked with, and some small ones, surprisingly, have created their own “YouTube University:” lots of little 10–15-min videos (just taken on a smart phone) on how to execute a multitude of daily tasks. These are then dropped into a suite of videos to create (typically) half-day training programmes that have developed over time into a larger suite of training modules. This approach has a number of advantages: It’s very cheap, it’s reusable, it keeps things consistent and it’s extremely focused on your specific needs.

Tip 6. Decide on Content

Next, get into the details and content of your training programme. You know where the gaps are and where your efforts need to be focused. If your sales staff are lacking in product knowledge or if your finance team are lacking in credit control skills, you need to find the most effective way of giving them that knowledge so that it is absorbed, retained and, most importantly, applied!

Different people learn in different ways. One framework (there are others) is that people have a preference for learning:

• Visually — seeing
• Auditorily — hearing
• Kinaesthetically — doing

Indeed, it has been suggested that this preference leaks out in our language, people say, “I see what you mean” (visual), “I hear what you say” (auditory) or “I get that” (kinaesthetic).  These clues are important and give us information around which to create and manage content.

The point is, you need to cater to all methods of learning, so unless you are lucky enough to do extensive research on the preference of each of your staff, variety is key! Although, it has been reported that more than 50% of us are visual learners, so the more visually interesting the better.

Tip 7. Check Out the Past

Before you go running headlong into the unknown, check out any previous approach to training. It’s likely there is a mine of information and lashings of lessons that could shape your current program. You may also discover approaches that have previously produced great results — or not — so, you can pinch the good ideas (and claim them as your own!) and avoid the others.

Tip 8. Keep Your Antenna Up

As we know, changes can happen almost in an instant. Depending on your position in an organisation, you need to know things that might make your planning redundant. How will AI impact your processes? Is a key package or controller supplier about to change? Will there be a merger or an acquisition? Is the IT system about to be replaced? You need to know the answers to questions like these or all the hard work and effort put into the plan can come to nought overnight.   

There is a (possibly) apocryphal story about a £75-m completely new painting plant at a major U.K. car plant. The whole line had been put in, and the training was about to begin only for the overseas headquarters to pull the plug on not just the training program but the whole of the investment! That’s a lot of time, effort, blood, sweat and tears that — with a little more thought — could have been better spent.

Tip 9. Some Things Are Beyond TNA

TNA is just a tool, a framework to help focus attention and effort; recognise that some things are beyond TNA. If your company’s IT systems are still running Windows XP and you are still using NCR (carbonless) paper, a TNA ain’t gonna fix that … and it’s not its job!

You can only create a training program for a company in the state that it’s in! 

Conclusion

Too many companies use cut-down versions of TNA in order to manage their compliance issues. Spreadsheets are kept, retained and updated to manage, usually, a range of health and safety issues: asbestos awareness, manual handling, forklift truck driving. All of which only focus on demonstrating conformance.

The best companies move the TNA process to a place where the focus is not conformance but performance. They genuinely ask the questions, “What are we here to do? What is our North Star? And how can training and development help us get there?”